Fad,fetish or fixture: contingent valuation of performing and visual arts festivals in Singapore

This paper analyses how much culture is valued in a newly-developed economy with a distinct dichotomy of an arts-appreciating population segment and a less-culturally aware mass. An analytical framework weaving together the intrinsic, business and societal benefits of arts and culture is applied to explore whether arts festivals – a popular tourism event in many countries – are a temporary fad, an expensive governmental fetish or a naturally-evolving fixture. This has implications for government funding and cultural policy. Empirical evidence supports the notion that the long-running performing arts festival is a not a fad but a fixture with some fetish elements while the visual arts festival appears to be a fad but has the potential to be a fixture. Of particular concern, however, is the evidence from both festivals that the perceptions of community benefit, business benefits as well as bequest value from the arts are not significant determinants of willingness to pay for these events.     

From institutions to events – structural change in Norwegian local cultural policy

In this paper we discuss the ongoing restructuring of local cultural policy in Norway. Since the 1990s, we argue, the local cultural sector has been undergoing a structural change, in the form of a movement from institutions to events. As public resources granted to traditional local cultural institutions such as libraries and culture schools decrease, there is a rise in resources granted to new arenas of local cultural life, such as cultural festivals and culture houses. We explain this shift of balance from institutions to events in local cultural policy with reference to three types of mechanism. First, we point to the ‘flexibilisation’ of the cultural sector, which ensues from its sensitivity to changes in the funding of the local governments. Second, new forms of earmarked state funding schemes pull local resources in the direction of cultural festivals and cultural events. A third mechanism that explains the shift from institutions to events is local policymakers’ adoption of theories of culture as a source of urban and regional regeneration.     

Auditing culture

This article explores the effects of the spread of the principles and practices of the New Public Management (NPM) on the subsidised cultural sector and on cultural policy making in Britain. In particular, changes in the style of public administration that can be ascribed to the NPM will be shown to provide a useful framework to make sense of what has been felt as an “instrumental turn” in British policies for culture between the early 1980s and the present day. The current New Labour Government, as well as the arm's length bodies that distribute public funds for the cultural sector in Britain, are showing an increasing tendency to justify public spending on the arts on the basis of instrumental notions of the arts and culture. In the context of what have been defined as “instrumental cultural policies”, the arts are subsidised in so far as they represent a means to an end rather than an end in itself. In this perspective, the emphasis placed on the potential of the arts to help tackle social exclusion and the role of the cultural sector in place‐marketing and local economic development are typical examples of current trends in British cultural policy making. The central argument purported by this article is that this instrumental emphasis in British cultural policy is closely linked to the changes in the style of public administration that have given rise to the NPM. These new developments have indeed put the publicly funded cultural sector under increasing pressure. In particular, it will be shown how the new stress on the measurement of the arts' impacts in clear and quantifiable ways – which characterises today's “audit society” – has proved a tough challenge for the sector and one that has not been successfully met. The article will conclude by critically considering how the spread of the NPM has affected processes of policy making for the cultural sector, and the damaging effects that such developments may ultimately have on the arts themselves.     

Towards a computational cultural policy studies: examining infrastructures of taste and participation

Like other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, cultural policy studies has had to respond to the influence of computing technologies. Researchers have explored the changes wrought to the management of cultural organisations, to the models of the creative industries and to new forms of access to culture and the arts. This paper suggests that these emphases might miss how computing technologies are re-shaping the project of cultural policy in a more fundamental direction. The paper draws on the work concerned with the cultural values of computing technologies and their influence on contemporary modes of government. These values, of instrumental reason, categorisation and calculation underpin a range of technologies, which are increasingly present in and important to the management of everyday life. Reflecting on how cultural taste and participation are being re-shaped by computing technologies, the paper argues these infrastructures are informed by specific visions of the kinds of people who live with and through them and how such people can be governed. The long-standing focus of cultural policy studies – about how states are concerned with the cultural formation of their citizens – are keenly present in the strategic ambitions and imperatives associated with computation.     

Arts practitioners in the cultural policy process: spear-carriers or speaking parts?

This paper considers the argument that arts practitioners are rarely acknowledged by cultural policy researchers as being more than marginally involved in policy-making. Drawing on public policy analysis which pays attention to a breadth of policy actors, and on the concept of civil society, the paper examines whether these approaches can help to better investigate and understand the role of arts practitioners in the policy process. It discusses this subject in relation to cultural policy in general and in the specific arena of British arts policy, focusing on original case-study research of playwrights’ organisations and playwriting policy. The case-study evidence demonstrates that arts practitioners – through involvement in policy debate and implementation, and their own initiatives and activities – are frequently engaged in the policy process and thus more broadly in the democratic public domain. Understanding of cultural policy development is therefore considerably weakened if the role of practitioners is ignored.     

The nation and the city: urban festivals and cultural mobilisation

This article attempts to map the relations between nation‐building processes in 19th‐century Europe and city cultures with their urban sociability. Three patterns are surveyed: [1] the modern‐national assimilation of medieval and early‐modern city cultures (sample case: Orléans and the French cult of Joan of Arc); [2] the modular replication across cities of urban festivals as cultural mobilizers (sample case: the spread of Floral Games festivals in Southern France and Northern Spain); [3] the reticulation of city‐based practices into a nationwide and nation‐building network (sample cases: the role of choral societies in German cultural nationalism; and its transnational knock‐on effect in the Baltic Provinces). By choosing the city as our social focus and placing it (or rather, its ideal‐type ‘Urbania’) alongside Gellner's ideal‐types of ‘Megalomania’ and ‘Ruritania’, we can avoid the finalism of studying regionalist and nationalist movements in the analytical framework of the post‐Versailles state system, and we gain a better understanding of the granulated, localized social basis of such movements and the translocally homogenizing role of culture.     

Mapping the arts: industry concentrations,distribution, and change in the US, 1980–2010

This paper studies arts industries in all 366 US metropolitan statistical areas between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis provides evidence that the arts are an important component of many regional economies, but also highlights their volatility. After radical growth and diffusion between 1980 and 2000, in the last decade, the arts industries are defined more by shrinkage and reconcentration in fewer metropolitan areas. Further, we find that the vast majority of metros have strengths in particular sets of arts industries. As we discuss in the conclusion, these conditions present challenges and opportunities for urban cultural policy that goes beyond the current focus on the arts as consumption amenities.     

Going ‘mainstream’: evaluating the instrumentalisation of multicultural arts

This paper considers how debates over the instrumentalisation of the arts have informed the cultural production of an Australian arts organisation – Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV). In an effort to make multicultural arts more ‘mainstream’, MAV has increasingly adopted market‐based rationales for its work – particularly the use of ‘audience development’ policy frameworks. It is easy to evaluate this marketisation of multicultural arts negatively as an acceptance of neoliberal policy agendas and as a weakening of its commitment to ‘cultural development’ goals. This paper suggests, however, via a critique of Ghassan Hage’s analysis of multiculturalism, that such accounts do not consider how economic rationales actually sit in practice with MAV’s other (cultural development) agendas. Such critiques, therefore, preclude an affirmative reading of the instrumentalisation of multicultural arts. An alternative analytical framework is proposed – one which can more readily account for multicultural arts as a set of practices informed by diverse agendas, and which acknowledges how such practices might both contest and converge with official government policies.     

How Australian industry policy shaped cultural policy

Public policies that aim to facilitate cultural activities to serve effectively as industries are often regarded as a new phenomenon. This article argues that arts and cultural policies in Australia have reflected and complemented Commonwealth industry policy for most of their history. The significant change that has happened in the past twenty years is not so much a change to cultural policy, but rather a change in the notion of industries and their role in the national economy.     

INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS AND ARTS POLICY RESEARCH1

There is a growth of networks in the cultural policy arena. Many of these networks have been formed to share information and to engage in comparative documentation and research. The International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA) is one such network, established with aims of consolidating the collective knowledge of arts councils and culture agencies, adding value to that knowledge, and improving the management and sharing of information on arts and cultural policy. Networks such as IFACCA impact on the research agenda in two main ways: directly, by undertaking, commissioning or collaborating on research projects, and indirectly, by highlighting the perceived information needs of their constituents or members. IFACCA’s main research programme, D’Art, is used as a case study to evaluate the direct impacts of the network, and this forms the basis for a discussion of the influence of such networks on the global arts policy research agenda.     

Arts and culture in an era of austerity: key stakeholder views on the current and future Australian context

The arts and culture sector in many countries faces major challenges, as a consequence of ongoing austerity measures and changes in the ways in which the arts are experienced. In major nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom and in several European countries, there is considerable pressure to look for new ways of surviving in an age of consumerism, accountability and rapidly changing technologies. On the other hand, many Asian countries have invested heavily in building their arts and culture sector as part of the new twenty-first-century economy. The arts and culture sector in Australia faces serious challenges at present, including ongoing fiscal pressures, an absence of any national cultural policy and disruption as a consequence of changing governments. In order to explore these issues, interviews were held with 22 key leaders from a range of Australian organisations associated with arts representation, funding, policy and advocacy. The findings highlight both the challenges and opportunities facing Australia towards what may be considered the next wave of innovation and change.     

Footprint or fingerprint: international cultural policy as identity policy

This article focuses on government policy aimed at the presentation of the nation abroad through cultural activities and its relation to national identity, external cultural policy. The methodological framework is offered by the discourse analysis of Wodak and the notion of identity of Laclau and Mouffe, treating policy as a discourse. A closer look is taken at the concept of cultural diplomacy and the closely related term nation branding. This article will show how the shift in paradigm also changes the role of ‘the other’ in the construction of national identity and how this influences the role of the arts in international cultural policy.     

Protection,survival and growth: an analysis of international policy documents

This paper reports findings from the analysis of three international policy documents produced by a department of the UK Government, a leading British cultural organisation and a national arts development agency. The analysis takes an unorthodox stance, proposing that the international strategies are rationales for the self-protection, survival and growth of the government department, agency and museum, as opposed to the operational action plans that they first appear or are assumed to be. As such, they bear little relationship to formal policy and should be viewed as organisational stratagems. This research raises a number of questions about the nature, purpose and impact of policy and its making. Calling for a rethinking of key concepts within the field, this article returns to the fundamentals by asking what we mean by cultural policy and how we conceptualise and study it empirically.     

Cultural policies in cities of the ‘global South’: a multi-scalar approach

ABSTRACT

Building on the literature on global cities and on the worlding of cities, the articles in this special issue chart how cities outside Europe and North America try to reinvent and rescale themselves using culture. They suggest that the fabric of urban cultural policy is embedded in multi-scalar power dynamics. First, the contributions in this special issue reveal the importance of circulating standards across borders in structuring narratives about urban history, heritage and identity, in conjunction with local actors’ interests. Second, the diffusion of hegemonic cultural policy models such as the “creative city” leads to logics of exclusion, gentrification, and has been met with resistance, which suggest that these models can be to the detriment of local residents, despite the progressive values they are often claim to promote. Third, this special issue points to the need to rethink the politics of cultural policy mobility and offers conceptual tools such as vernacularization to make sense of the ways in which urban elites navigate, negotiate and take advantage of circulating cultural policy models.     

The ‘Liverpool model(s)’: cultural planning,Liverpool and Capital of Culture 2008

Within the UK, the ‘Liverpool model’ is being celebrated as the new template for Capital of Culture festivals, and culture led urban regeneration in general. This paper will question this celebration and argue that there are, in fact, two ‘Liverpool models’: the first, outlined in its bid and developed within its initial planning strategy, represented the apogee of a New Labour informed ‘cultural planning’ framework for urban development; the second, developed post-2008 within the impact analysis Impacts08, is a more sober and realistic reflection of the role of culture in urban regeneration. This paper will demonstrate how this first model, while politically expedient and rhetorically seductive, was both theoretically unstable and practically unrealizable. Its subsequent abandonment represents an indictment of cultural planning as a nostrum for the complex structural, social and economic problems of the post-industrial city.     

Putting the “art” back into arts policy making: how arts policy has been “captured” by the economists and the marketers

Abstract: This paper explores the current discourse about arts policy and funding and its placement within an economic paradigm. The models of “cultural industry” and “creative industry” are explored and how they affect arts funding discourse. Similarly the impact of the introduction of the language of industry and business to the arts sector is considered. If bottom-line arguments are used by funders, governments and critics to argue the merits or otherwise of arts activity, how does this affect arts practice? In recent times arts funding agencies have been restructured to reflect a market-driven agenda rather than an arts-driven agenda. The impact of all these issues is considered in the context of Australian arts' models in particular, but with reference to examples in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The paper concludes with suggestions for a reassertion of core cultural values in future discourse.     

From Coombs to Crean: popular music and cultural policy in Australia

The many bodies administering Australian arts activity were incorporated within the Australia Council, established in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government to oversee Commonwealth arts policy under the direction of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs. This article takes the establishment of the Australia Council as a starting point in tracing changing attitudes towards the practices and funding of popular music in Australia and accompanying policy discourses. This includes consideration of how funding models reinforce understandings of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, the ‘cultural’/‘creative’ industries debates, and their effects upon local popular music policy. This article discusses the history of local music content debates as a central instrument of popular music policy and examines the implications for cultural nationalism in light of a recent series of media and cultural reports into industries and funding bodies. In documenting a broad shift from cultural to industrial policy narratives, the article examines a central question: What does the ‘national’ now mean in contemporary music and the rapid evolution of digital media technologies?     

The process of privatisation of cultural heritage and the arts in Italy: analysis and perspectives

During the last decade, institutional changes in the cultural heritage sector triggered some fierce debate in Europe. This paper analyses the complex process of privatising cultural heritage and the arts in Italy, showing how the relationship between this process and urban regeneration policies is tacitly legitimising it, despite the harsh controversies it previously provoked. From a perspective of ‘territorialisation’ discussed in this paper, this policy process could enhance the involvement of the private sector, bringing to light new fields of research and application in the international heritage debate.     

Researchers,bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.